Imperially Afflicted
by inthelookingglass
Summary: Little character studies of various characters within the novel, in the format of parallels with the fictional novel 'An Imperial Affliction'.
1. Affliction

**Seeing as the lack of TFIOS fic is making me sad, I've decided to contribute! Bits in italic are 'An Imperial Affliction' quotes(Remember, I'm not Peter Van Houten so...) and bits that are normal are well... normal:) Hope you enjoy!**

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><p><em>Mother's good eye focused on the building tide, watching as the wave gained strength, before crashing down onto the sand. She saw the world through one eye, and through her simplified singular perspective, she had found herself incapable of seeing the world in anyway apart from the world she saw. She saw a broken world, with no hope, desperately trying to gain strength, not unlike the thickening waves dancing in front of her.<em>

_..._

He'd loved her. He'd _always _loved her. She'd told him that- despite the fact he only had one eye, and that he'd soon be unable to appreciate the world's visual beauty due his unfortunate illness- she'd _always _love him.

_Always. _What had it all even meant? Wasn't always meant to be a promise? A promise that no matter what awful hand the world had given them, their love would be infinite? It had meant nothing. Nothing at all. The world was falling apart, quaking underneath Augustus' prosthetic and Hazel's trusty oxygen tank, and Isaac couldn't glue it back together. No matter how hard he sobbed and begged and prayed, Monica refused to listen. He had no hope. No strength. His painful affliction- which had caused left his eyes unable to do the things eyes are meant to do, and left Isaac in extreme pain at times- had resulted in yet more pain.

...

_The sunlight hit against the light green grass, reflecting back slightly yellow in contrast with my shadow. It was as if Anna could see photosynthesis taking place right in front of her, the chlorophyll trapping in the light energy beaming from the sun and using it to help make it grow. She gave up trying to stand up, knowing fine well why her already fragile body was resisting against her, and waited. She just stared at the greenery underneath her nose, waiting. It was back, and it was devouring her nervous system, leaving her motionless and limp. Life had been halted by a stop sign of inconvenient placement._

_..._

In that moment, Augustus hated himself. He hated his body refusing to work in his favor, resisting the signals his brain was sending to his organs. He hated thinking about the maliciously cancerous tumours that his insides consisted of, clutching fervently at the controller that programmed him, treating his life like a carelessly played level of Counterinsurgence. But Augustus wasn't wasn't Max Mayhem. There wasn't a start button he could press, giving him the option to bring the game to a halt or erase a whole fraction of his life.

Fumbling with the G-tube, he breathed in shakily. He could feel Hazel's hand brushing against his forehead and wiping the vomit from his chin as his eyelids began to droop.

He liked life, but as his last little bit of independence became obselete, in that moment, he would've been quite satisfied if he'd died right there and then. Trying to keep himself concious, he filled his mind with thinking about his favourite part of 'An Imperial Affliction', where Anna falls and can't get back up, and immediately knows her cancer is back. Even though Peter Van Houten was a shitty person, there was no denying he was a good writer. He knew his body was failing him. He knew that he had no control over what happened. His knowledge hadn't made it any easier. The pain was desperately demanding to be felt.

...

_"The thing about pain," the dutch tulip man turned to Anna, before averting his eyes outside of the window. "Is that it demands to be felt. No matter how much morphine they pump through your body, the affliction will always try to fight it. Painkillers don't murder pain. They just fight a battle that they're going to lose in the end. The pain always returns. Like you, Anna, they are fighting a war with pain being the predetermined winner."_

_..._

Watching his daughter everyday, trekking along through her everyday life with her trusty oxygen tank by her side, had never been easy for Mr Lancaster. He'd leave for work most mornings close to tears, having convinced himself that when he'd return, Hazel's battle would've been lost. For her first thirteen years, he took her for granted, fantasizing about the big milestones like her wedding and her first child, but as the doctors broke the news to their family that Hazel's life expectancy was limited, he realised that those milestones would never be reached.

As Hazel headed off to Amsterdam, he was sure she wouldn't return. Just weeks ago, she'd been screaming in pain because her lungs were filled with so much gunk. Surely she couldn't live could she?

It _killed _him. The emotional pain pierced him like a knife, turning him into a sobbing wreck. The resistant pain begged for his attention. Hazel's affliction wasn't just hers. It was his too. And her mum's. And Augustus'. And Isaac's. And all of her friends. The affliction was everyone's.

...


	2. Hemartia

**More TFIOS fic is in existance, so I'm super happy:D aha :L Anyway, let's move on to the next three parallels; Hazel, Hazel's mother and Peter Van Houten. Also, I'm not a best-selling author, so my AIA is obviously nothing like what the real AIA would ever be like, and I'd never want to write all of it in one fanfic, because I don't particularly want to turn into a pretentious drunken man like Van Houten...:)**

**My 'head-canons' for the bit in the story where Augustus goes AWOL in the airport are either he- like he claimed- didn't want people staring, OR he was away taking medicine/puking/arguing with his parents on the phone because they didn't want him to go, so I'll touch on that in this chapter.**

**Also, I tend to end up making science references in my fan-fics without realising, so if I end up doing that... well yeah. **

**Warning: This contains HUGE spoilers for the novel, so unless you've finished the book, don't read this yet. **

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><p><em>Anna had always thought that dying wouldn't hurt. That when the time for dying was finally just moments away, where she was no longer a barnacle on the container ship of conciousness, she'd just slip away, painless and free. She would often dream of the time where pain wasn't constantly screaming at her, and ordering for her to feel. Her limp malignant body was slowly failing on her. Her blood, bones and nerve system dominated by the foriegn tumours, holding her back from being the normal little girl she really was.<em>

_..._

Hazel took a glance around the airport, suddenly aware that people were watching her. The oxygen tank she'd christened as Phillip sat behind her foot, acting both as a name sticker and the thing that was keeping her alive had meant that the people around her didn't need to know her to know that she was ill- Phillip and the oxygen it pumped through the cannula wrapped around her cheeks made it obvious.

Augustus had run off, claiming to have went to McDonalds to pick up a burger, but for some reason, Hazel thought differently. Of course, being oblivious to the fact that Augustus' affliction was back with a vengeance, Hazel didn't know that Augustus was actually swallowing back the first of his brand new box of pills, having just emptied his breakfast into the toilet, but she could almost sense something was wrong.

People couldn't understand that Hazel wasn't the picture her illness painted up front. Sure, her lungs sucked and her life was limited, but that didn't mean she craved the sympathetic looks that the strangers in the airport were giving her. She wanted to be nothing more than the normal teenage girl she actually was. Up front, Hazel may have been a perfect portrayal of her affliction, but in heart, Hazel was the picture of health. Life may have given her a giant hemartia, but her normality in personality would never be flawed.

...

_Her hands were almost constantly cold. In fact, her hold body seemed to run a constantly low temperature, due to the fact that the oxygen just wouldn't diffuse completely through her bloodstream. It wasn't like it ever bothered Anna, for it had been a long time where she hadn't felt ihumanly frozen, but for those around her- like her mother- it was just another thing that painted her affliction onto her exterior, like paint on a famous Van Gogh, revealing the obvious._

...

The concentrated glass of scotch slipped down his throat, burning away at his oesophagus, gnawing away at his liver. He shouldn't do this. He shouldn't throw his life away, downing glass after glass of alcohol while blasting Swedish hip-hop music he barely even liked. It just hurt _so much. _The pain was almost incomprehensible, as if he could never find the right words to describe how much it hurt.

His girl. His little tiny fragile girl. His precious Amelia. Pulled away from life like metal by a magnet, she'd never get to see the man her father, Peter Van Houten could've been. Had it not been for her death, he'd not have become the washed up, drunken recluse he'd become. He refuses to cope. He _can't _cope. He knows he's become an awful person. He knows he'll die soon, whether it's by his own choice, or through liver failure or some other drink related problem, but he couldn't care less. In fact, that's what he wanted. To be lifted from the hopeless repetitive life he was living. To erase the entire hamartia that was his fatally flawed life. To not be faced with the challenge of lifting himself out of bed every morning, needing the incentive of alcohol to get him through the day.

He grabbed the book from the bookshelf, his shivering fingers grasping onto it with a great desperation. He _hated _the book. It was flawed. He'd not done poor little Amelia justice. Her innocent affliction had induced his selfish affliction, and he despised himself for it.

...

_She watched Anna waste away, becoming literally nothing more than skin and bones, becoming so weak that moving even an inch came with great difficulty. She had to stay strong for Anna's sake. She couldn't break. She wouldn't break. _

_..._

If Augustus' recent death wasn't bad enough, Hazel's lungs were slowly beginning to deteriorate faster than they'd ever done before. The fortunate miracle of Phalanxifor was quicly becoming less of a miracle and more of a curse, filling her already weakened lungs with foreign fluid, making just the simple task of respiration seem like the most difficult thing in the world.

_Respiration._ Hazel's mother- along with the majority of the rest of the world- often took the simple task of converting glucose and oxygen into carbon dioxide, water and energy for granted. Breathing in and out, without even thinking properly about it.

She _couldn't_ cry. She _wouldn't _cry. She needed to be strong for Hazel. For her husband. For Isaac. For the late Augustus. She couldn't let herself end up like Peter Van Houten once Hazel passes away- which at that moment, was likely to occur soon. She couldn't let those around her, or others in their situation, turn out like the poor drunken man. If anyone around her were to break, she'd be the glue that would hold the cracks together. She'd be the steady hand, holding together the shattered fragments to prevent them from further breaking. She'd prevent them from the possible hemartia. She'd be _strong. _


	3. Death

**I'm sorry for making this so angsty and tragic... but well, this is a death focused chapter so...**

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><p><em>Death was cast over Anna, like it is cast over every single living organism in this world. There would come a time where her existance on Earth went no further than a corpse in the ground and the memories that lived on in people's minds. Death stood over her, threatening to snatch her into some kind of personal singular oblivion of her life as the poisoned blood pulsed through her veins for it's last time. Death was coming for her- it was just waiting for the right moment. <em>

_..._

Augustus knew he was dying. He'd been aware that he was dying since he'd understood that he was living. He was dying, like every other person on the planet. No matter what mark he'd made on the world, or what mark anyone else had made on the world, every human being who had been in existance would at one point have to face the unfortunate fate that is death.

For the first time since his diagnosis, he could truly feel like he was made of cancer. Sure, he'd spoke the point aloud before, but it was the first time he'd actually meant it. Maybe it was just the cocktail of drugs seeping through his system, keeping him somewhere between unescapable darkness and some kind of drug-induced paradise plastered over reality, but he honestly could feel the tumour in his hip sitting against the bone, eating away at the unhealthy cells trying to gain strength for itself.

...

_As humans, we are an ignorant race. We focus on our busy materialistic lives, getting caught up in our selfish actions, without once taking a step back to admire the beauty of the creation of both life and death around us until it's too late to savour it. Anna stared at the sea from her hospital bed, thinking of the lively fish swooping through the water; of the passing on of energy between different species through food chains; of the lives of the poor little dead fish lying at the bottom of the ocean who'd never get the chance to live; wishing that she could have just a few more days. She'd die without being a_

_..._

Hazel was about to explode. She could feel it, despite the haze of medication she was on that made her not feel so scared about the fact she could barely breathe. Soon, her parents would be pulling bits of her shrapnel from their skin, just like she had done just a few months ago with Augustus. Before her eyes began to droop, threatening to never open again, her eyes fixated on Isaac as she thought about his future; if robot eyes would ever actually be invented; if he'd get back with Monica; if his cancer would make a reoccurence, and take more than his sight next time.

...

_The layer of thick black fabric was pulled over Anna's face, hiding her colourless, cold skin. For the first time in a long time, Anna's mom broke. She honestly felt like she'd been smashed into a million pieces. _

_Anna's mom had been plagued with the same dream for many nights, terrified about the day it would become reality._

_..._

Peter Van Houten's fingers clutched around the glass as he stared at the photograph. _Amelia. _His perfect little Amelia. Stolen away at the hands of death. The silence diffused through the room, drilling into his skull as the glass of scotch carelessly clinked against the floor. He glared at the photo again, gazing up and down at his beautiful little girl.


	4. Augustus

_The front was the most difficult part; having to pretend that she was okay, when in fact, all of her bones ached and she felt like she was going to vomit at every hour of the day. Deep down, Anna wanted to scream to the world that she wasn't okay, but she turned to take a look at her mother from her place on the couch, putting up her own front to hide the pain she felt inside. The question was asked again; 'how are you?'. She replied with the same 'okay' that she always did, even if it wasn't quite true._

_..._

Augustus cared about Hazel's scrambled egg rant. Augustus really did. It was just that food wasn't really what he wanted to think about sitting in the airport, with his stomach churning desperately as his breakfast threatened to attempt a great escape. He frantically excused himself, not sure his insides would remain _inside _for much longer_. _He felt as if the acid inside his stomach was tearing away at its walls just seconds before he finally made it to a toilet cubicle.

Once he was half sure he wasn't going to spew again, he sat back, pressing his head against the wall of the cubicle and concentrated on his breathing. He felt like crying out, angry at himself for not being able to confide in Hazel. He didn't want to be sick again. He felt like a kid crying because they didn't get what they wanted for Christmas. It was out of his control. He composed himself, making sure his breath didn't stink of puke and headed back; the first wall of his front had been built. Wanting to make the lie he'd mumbled out to Hazel more solid, he collected a burger from one of the fast food shops, and broke a few pieces of into the bin, making it look like he'd ate some of it; the second wall. He told her the line had been long; and the third. He then falsely admitted his embarrassment of their fellow passengers looking at them; and there was the fourth. And there he was, standing in the middle of them all. Hazel Grace was none the wiser.

...

_For Anna, some things were better kept secret. She didn't want to tell her mother about any possible progressions her illness had made. She didn't want her mother to be upset. It may have seemed desperate, and a bit of a lost cause, but more than anything, she didn't want the way those close to her treated her to change. She just wanted to be Anna. Not Anna with cancer. Not sick little Anna. Not the poor little girl who spent a lot of time in room 54 of the Memorial Hospital. She just wanted to be Anna._

_..._

"You used to call me Augustus."

Augustus wasn't sure why it had bothered him so much. I mean, other people called him 'Gus' all the time. Maybe it was just that she would _always _be Hazel Grace to him, and never just Hazel, and he just thought he'd always be Augustus and never Gus. Maybe 'okay' hadn't been their only 'always'. He knew he was not the boy she met months before; he was just that boy's shadow. He was weak and sick and tired, and the majority of his dignity had abandoned him and flew off to who knows where. He knew that he was a dead man walking, all pale and scrawny like a corpse. He just never thought Hazel would see him that way.

It's not just Hazel Grace's attitude that has changed. It's the way his sisters and their other halves suddenly act like they care, fussing over him like he's a five year old child. It's especially odd, seeing as before, the only time he'd see them would be Thanksgiving or Christmas, and even then, they didn't always show.

He was still Augustus, despite the fact that his body had failed him, just like she was still Hazel Grace, despite the fact that her lungs sucked at their job. There was no reason for anyone to treat him any differently now that he was sick, and was going to die. He was the same boy, maybe not in body but in mind.

...

_Anna could barely remember how it had started. Her mother had told her that she'd been ill for a while, but she just thought it was some kind of flu that her daughter was finding it hard to shake. When she was finally given the diagnosis, everything seemed to fall into place. It happened all at once. They rushed her into treatment, often trying out recently available methods on her like she was their little guinea pig._

_She'd grown used to it all- the medical jargon, and the condescending manner of her peers' way of speaking- but even still, she couldn't help but be terrified. She didn't want to wake up the next day, only to find that she actually could feel worse than she already did, having to deal with some knew pain or symptom or side effect from the medication._

_..._

It had started with a dull ache in his knee. It would be worse at night, feeling like someone had hacked the bottom of his leg off with an axe. He assumed he'd picked up his injury playing basketball, and organized a few extra sessions with the team's physio. When the pain ceased to go away, his parents arranged for him to see his doctor. The time between then and his diagnosis flew by; school was busy and he had very little time to stop and think. Until the day he found out, he'd hardly thought about it.

When they told him he'd have to lose his leg, it was like the lights went off in his head. He finally understood the seriousness of the situation after months of what you could probably class as denial. Through the treatment that followed, he let those four walls fall down a little. He gave in to telling those around him when he was nauseous or when he though something wasn't right.

If only the lesson had been learnt.


End file.
